The National Transportation Safety Board recommended this week to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration that they explore making several heavy-duty vehicle safety technologies mandatory.


The recommendations come in response to an October 2005 accident on I-94 in Wisconsin where a tractor-trailer rolled over and a motorcoach ran into the wreckage. Four passengers and the bus driver had fatal injuries, and 35 other passengers were injured.

The investigation revealed that the truck driver was fatigued and fell asleep at the wheel. Before the truck left the roadway, other drivers reported that the trucker had been repeatedly drifting out of his lane. Possible technologies that could have helped in this instance, the NTSB noted, included lane departure warning systems, driver monitoring systems such as PERCLOS (which measures the rate of eyelid closure), and electronic onboard recorders (the driver did not have a log book.)

NTSB recommended that FMCSA "develop and implement a plan to deploy technologies in commercial vehicles to reduce the occurrence of fatigue-related accidents," as well as "develop and use a methodology that will continually assess the effectiveness of the fatigue management plans implemented by motor carriers, including their ability to improve sleep and alertness, mitigate performance errors, and prevent incidents and accidents."

The Safety Board's investigation also indicated that the motorcoach's collision with the overturned truck might have been mitigated, or possibly prevented, had the bus been equipped with a CWS with active braking capability.

"Both active braking and ESC technologies represent opportunities for significant enhancement of CWSs' capabilities to prevent (or mitigate) commercial vehicle accidents," said Mark Rosenker, acting NTSB chairman, in his letter to NHTSA. "Therefore, the Safety Board recommends that NHTSA determine whether equipping commercial vehicles with CWSs with active braking and ESC systems will reduce commercial vehicle accidents. If these technologies are determined to be effective in reducing accidents, NHTSA should require their use on commercial vehicles."

In both the letters to the FMCSA and NHTSA, the NTSB cited several other serious accidents where these technologies could have mitigated or prevented an accident.

Read the complete NTSB letter to FMSCA at http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/letters/2008/H08_13_14.pdf

Read the complete letter to NHTSA at http://www.ntsb.gov/recs/letters/2008/H08_15_H01_6_7.pdf